


10 Truths and A Thousand Lies

by OpalEmpress



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Romance, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:00:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29468358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpalEmpress/pseuds/OpalEmpress
Summary: He lies with words. She lies by omission. He's charm and concealment, she's intellect and investigation. A fix for the obviously glitched and missing Deacon/Sole Survivor romance in Fallout 4, tracking through the main questline, with some detours to side quests.
Relationships: Deacon/Female Sole Survivor, Past Nate/Female Sole Survivor
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	1. 1

It’s been a surprisingly good day. The Professor is turning out to be a good heavy, better than he expected, and H2-22 is safely tucked into Ticon. She’s antsy to be on the move again, Deacon can see it in the way she’s fiddling with the magazine of Deliverer and in her glances toward the elevator that are becoming increasingly sour as time passes.

But he’s been at this a long time, and it’s a bright sunny day, with no cloud cover, and nowhere to hide. The worst time to travel.

“She’s a little intense, huh?” says High Rise, handing Deacon an open tepid beer and taking a seat at the small kitchen table.

Deacon shrugs, “Not always, if you can believe it. Once she started a radstag riding competition to determine who got the last Fancy Lads.”

“Sure she did, man,” High Rise laughs, and her eyes snap to the two of them in an instant, dark hair falling in front of her face. When he had seen her for the first time, it had been an attractive, sensible cut—now, it was tangled and hung far past her shoulders, adding a wildness to her look, even as she pushed her glasses up her nose.

High Rise held out another beer in her direction, “Joining us, Professor?”

She hesitates, but then sighs and tucks the pistol back into its holster on her thigh, “Yeah, okay. Why not.”

As she takes a seat, Deacon leans forward, “We’ll hang here until tonight, yeah? Then head wherever.”

She takes a sip, “Got somewhere in mind?”

He shakes his head, “Following your lead, pal.”

“You guys are welcome in Ticon as long as you need,” says High Rise, “Little home away from home. Or at least a safe place to rest your head, catch a breath.”

The Professor presses her lips together in a shadow of a smile, “Thanks, but I have to… Places to be, you know.” Her leg is beating a rhythm too frantic to match any song into the floor, even as she takes a measured sip from her bottle.

There’s a short pause, before Deacon says, keeping his voice as flippant as ever, says, “Well, we’re intruding on your hospitality for a bit longer. Got any bright ideas to wile away the hours, High Rise? Spa treatments, arts and crafts, three act play?”

“Sorry, Deacon, just the usual. Sleep, food, cards, repairs. Knock yourself out.”

“You gotta get a pool table in here, High Rise,” says Deacon as he stands, wandering over to the end table near the stairs and pulling a stained and beaten deck of card from it.

“Sure, you just let me know when you can get it up the eighteen flights, D-man.”

“You know, I think I’m busy for the foreseeable future,” he takes his seat again, “How about it, Professor? With all those caps you’re carrying, I’m happy to teach you a little game called “poker.’”

She glares at him through her lashes, but there’s a spark of playfulness behind her eyes as she snatches the deck from him, and then the cards are folding, flipping, mixing between her fingers with a flair and elegance that just doesn’t exist in the Commonwealth anymore, even though her eyes don’t move from his face. And Deacon has to remind himself that, though he definitely knows her better than she knows him, knows more of her than she has chosen to share, he really knows very little of this woman who crawled out of Vault 111, isn’t even sure of her name. 

The Professor sets the deck down in the middle of the table with finality, and takes a sip of her beer, a smug smile barely held back, and “I think I’m up to speed.” There’s a challenge in her voice, and Deacon never could resist one of those.

High Rise laughs as he reaches for another bottle from the crate, “I like you already, Professor.”

Cards are dealt, caps put up. The three agents find a rhythm, between jokes and bets and stories that are probably lies or at least not complete truths, and Deacon notices the Professor’s leg has stopped tapping incessantly, even though her eyes dart out the window every so often, tracking the height of the sun.

But when the sun is drifting tantalizing close to the horizon, he sees her leg vibrating again, and she’s not focusing on her hand anymore, instead anxiously adjusting her glasses. He’s pretty sure she has no idea she’s doing it, but he also can tell when someone is about to explode with tension.

“Okay, Professor, I need your attention,” he says, tone as teasing as he can make it, “We’ve got time for one more hand, and I’ve got a bet that will interest you.”

She meets his gaze, but barely, waiting for him to continue.

“Caps are all well and good, but you aren’t a merc. So, last hand, and the pot is one true statement from me.”

Her eyes settle on him as High Rise whistles, “Awful lot of confidence coming from you, Deacon.”

He does have confidence, as well as a decent amount of practice with sleight-of-hand tricks, so he’s not exactly worried about losing. (Plus, it’s one truth. He’s told her the truth before, at least once. No big deal. No reason for his stomach to be churning.) More importantly, it’s a distraction—one that seems like it’s working.

See, she’s the Professor, and she’s tempted by knowledge. She hasn’t come out and said it, but he’s 80% sure that part of the reason she puts up with his lying is because he’s a puzzle to her, like she is to him. It’s why she came to find them, based on a rumor and a trail of clues, unapproached. Like recognizes like.

Her shoulders are still tense, but her leg has stopped bouncing, and her eyes aren’t darting around the room like she’s planning to leap out of the window to get to the road faster. Not as likely to fall head over heels into danger the second they step outside in her desire to get back to Diamond City and see what Valentine might have to say about her boy.

He holds out the reshuffled deck, allowing a grin to curl his lips, the exact shit-eating grin that irks Glory and Dez into letting him do whatever he wants to do. And she huffs, plants her feet, and says, “Fine. ONE more hand. But then, I’m leaving with or without you.”

“Totally fair. You in, High Rise?”

The other man laughs, “Nah, man. But if you think I’m gonna miss out on this conversation, you’re wrong.”

The Professor smiles, “I’m not sure what it’s like now, but when I learned, the rule was ‘If you sit at the table, you have to ante.’”

“That’s just mean, Prof,” High Rise laughs, and motions for Deacon to deal him in.

The game seems slower now, but maybe that’s just his response to leaving soon. Her anxiety is contagious, even as her brow furrows and she weighs up potential risk in her head, watches her opponents for tells and weaknesses. And Deacon watches, observes, and learns about her.

He learns now that the Professor hates to lose.

But when he shows his cards, a _completely_ legitimate full house, against her straight and High Rise’s three of a kind, lose she does. She sighs through gritted teeth in annoyance, then slumps back into her chair.

“Fuck.”

“To the victor goes the spoils,” he counters, “So…..”

She rolls her eyes, “No need to be a dick, Deacon. One question. Out with it.”

“I’m thinking,” he shoots back. Because there is so much he doesn’t know, wants to know, could know, about this woman who he has watched for months quietly, carefully, or about the world that was, the world that to her is home, and he turns over a thousand possibilities in his head in a moment that probably feels like an eternity to her.

“Alright—it’s a big one. Very serious, and I want a full answer.”

Her mouth twists, jaw tightening and eyes hardening behind her eyeglasses, “That was the deal.”

“What… is your favorite flavor of Nuka-Cola?”

Her laugh sputters out of her like a generator stuttering to start as the tension in her shoulders breaks, and he realizes this is the first time he’s heard her laugh—a real genuine laugh. It’s not melodious or musical or joyful, but it is unexpectedly genuine, though short.

Deacon feigns annoyance, “Hey, I’m being serious! This is vital intel!”

“Sure, sure,” she says, setting her face in a serious frown that shakes with suppressed giggles, “Well, while I do like the Quantum on occasion, I don’t think anything beats an ice-cold classic.”

“What, no love for Nuka-Cherry?” High Rise feigns indignation, “That’s my favorite. And yes, that counts as my true answer.”

“Cherry has its place, but nothing beats the original!” the Professor stands, stretches, looks around for her pack, but her smile stays on her lips. 

“Both of you are crazy,” says Deacon as he stands, downing the dregs of his beer, “Nuka-Orange is obviously the superior flavor.”

The Professor laughs again as she shoulders her rifle, and pushes the elevator’s call button, “That is the most obvious lie I’ve heard from you yet, Deacon.”


	2. 2

She wipes her brow, panting, and grateful there’s not more blood. The library had been one of her favorite places—she had spent a lot of time here, pouring through notes and texts, prepping for the BAR exam.

Now, it’s one more ruin, scattered with more bodies than books. A few more now, she thinks as she steps over the green body of the—what are they called?—super mutants. She almost rolls her eyes—humanity hasn’t gotten any better at naming things in 200 years, then.

“Professor, where’d you go?” Deacon’s voice echoes in the open room.

“Just down the hall. Think any more are coming?”

Deacon straightens his sunglasses, “Don’t hear any—and super mutants aren’t exactly quiet. Think we’re good for now. Wanna scrounge through before we head back to Goodneighbor with the good news?”

“We might as well,” she shoulders her rifle and sighs as she depresses the plunger of stimpack. She isn’t too hurt, but it would help close the flesh wounds she had, “We need to be prepared before we head west.”

West, to Fort Hagen. Where Kellogg is, or at least has been very recently. The location is too fortified, too obviously tended to, to be abandoned. So, Shaun _must_ be there. Maybe whatever other children Kellogg has taken, too. Maybe it is a waystation for the Institute—that is likely what Deacon believes, though he hasn’t said directly.

There’s little left here, but not nothing. A few coolers abandoned in a hurry with Med-X and Jet, ammo boxes with 10mm for her and .308 for him. She even manages to find a mostly undamaged copy of a medical science magazine, and is grinning at her find when she looks up, and feels memory hit her in the chest, harder than a baseball bat or tire iron wielded against her ever could.

_“Hi—I think I’m supposed to be meeting with you?”_

_She looked up, into the green eyes of the man in front of her. Books with unbent spines were tucked under his arm, and he stood too straight to be anything other than army._

The table is covered with books and debris, but she steps forward, their titles long obscured but she remembers what they should be, which ones should be notated with pen and post-it, which were just handwritten notes, which were as yet unopened.

_“Can I help you?”_

_He extended his hand, “You’re Professor Harper, right? I’m Nate- just joined your introduction to psychology lecture?”_

_She cocked her head, recapping her pen, “No? Do I look old enough to be a professor?”_

_The man’s—Nate’s—eyes widened, “Oh, shit. No! I’m so sorry. I thought your email said…” he shifted the books he carried, tugging a printed sheet out of his jacket pocket, then grimaced, “Table 54. Not 45. Right.” He ran his hand over hair that was barely growing out of its buzzed length, “I’m… relearning how to people. Sorry to interrupt you.”_

The numbers on the table are gone now, peeled off with time and decay, and the chairs are broken or toppled over now. The floor has broken in some places, is about to break in others. Vines have grown up through what had been the window that had let in light to study by.

_She relaxed, smiled at his obvious embarrassment, “It’s alright. Harper’s usually in the next study section when she holds office hours. Be warned, she’s a savage lecturer, and she’s even tougher one-on-one. I barely made it through her intro class during my undergrad.”_

_“Oh, that’s not comforting. What are you studying now?” His eyes were bright green, almost too green to be real. And she realized she was staring, and stuttered an answer._

_“Just started trying for a law degree,” she rubbed her eyes behind her glasses, suddenly wishing she had put on a little more makeup this morning, “It’s… well, I’m questioning my decision in a lot of ways.”_

_Nate laughed, short and sharp, but too loud for the space. The few others sitting at tables started, turned with glares on their faces, and he raised a hand in apology._

Sound echoes through the space still, but there is so little sound now—no scratching pencils, no whirring terminals, no headphones playing too loudly from a table over. No voices, no laughter.

_Well, I probably shouldn’t keep her waiting then,” Nate said and took a step away from the table before turning back on his heel, “Hey, uh… if you’ve got time later, do you want to grab a drink? Give me some tips on getting through her lectures?”_

_He tried to play off the question flippantly, but his cheeks had reddened, even as his voice was steady and easy._

_She ducked her head, “Yeah, okay. Sounds like fun.”_

_“Great! That’s great—uh…”_

_“Elizabeth,” she supplied._

_“Elizabeth,” His smile was wide and made him go from attractive to downright gorgeous, “I can… meet you here, I guess? In an hour or so?”_

_She laughed too loud this time, and got a look from another student in the opposite corner, “If you’re talking to Harper? Better make it two.”_

“Professor?” Deacon’s voice cuts through her memory, yanking her to the present, where the books scattered across the table were burnt and ruined, covering no specific topic, where next to the chair she had sat in was the remains of a destroyed Protectron unit, and the floor where Nate had stood was caving into the floor below.

“Yeah,” Elizabeth says, voice barely her own.

“You alright? I made an excellent joke and you didn’t laugh, so I gotta imagine that means you took a shot to the head or something.”

“No, I’m fine,” she turns back to look at her companion, framed in the doorway, “Come on, I want to see if we can find a working terminal.”

Deacon’s blessedly quiet for a moment, but then says, “Did you come here before the war?”

She sighs. _The War._ They all mention it as though she was there for it, forgetting that she was locked in a vault minutes after the bombs were fired, “Why would it matter, Deacon?”

“Just curious,” he says, his voice casual—too casual, Elizabeth thinks, but still unreadable. Deacon can wear a thousand masks in an hour, and she can barely see that they _are_ masks still, “What was it like?” Seeing her face, he adds, “Or I can save that question for another poker game. Don’t mind me.”

She sighs as they reach the computer terminals, “Fine. Yes, I came here. I spent a lot of time here, in fact.”

“What did you do?”

“Studied. Took notes. Read. Used the printers when mine was out of ink.” _Fell in love, once._

“What were you studying for? Can’t imagine what that was like.”

“ A law degree.” It’s a strange thing, to still be proud of a piece of paper, but she is.

“Putting bad guys away even before all this, huh?”

Elizabeth shakes her head, a small smile lifting one side of her mouth, “Nothing so exciting. I was focused in constitutional law—what a country has a right to do, what a state does, protecting the rights of people,” she sighs, looking around once again, tracing a finger along the dust settled on a shelf, “Basically useless now, you know.”

“Hey, you never know. I mean, you’re probably the most qualified candidate for literally hundreds of positions now,” Deacon quips, taking a seat on the floor by a broken terminal. He runs a hand across his head, sunglasses tracking across the ceiling as she takes a seat in front of an unbroken terminal, “It’s funny here. Still feels like it’s got something in it. In the stones, you know?”

She nods, because she does know. The same way that Old North Church still feels sacred, the same way that people made a home in the walls of a stadium that had sheltered so many good memories, the same way Bunker Hill’s monument still imposed and beckoned. The library still felt like a place of knowledge, of learning. Some strange magic in the stone that was immune to radiation and war or at least resistant to it.

She shakes her head, “Well, let’s see what I can dig up in the servers, huh?” She cracks her neck and flexes her fingers over the keyboard, “Let me know if the robots start getting jumpy, but otherwise, let me focus, okay?”

“You’re the Professor,” says Deacon, shifting his rifle in his lap and leaning back into the wall.

Her hands stutter at the echo of his voice, one that sounds too much like someone else, and she decides that if these walls can hold that memory, too, then she will fight to make sure this building is still standing. At least that way she is not the only one to remember Nate.


	3. 3

Deacon’s ears are ringing from gunfire in the enclosed space. Damn bullets, this is why he prefers to use the energy pistols like the synths. Even the Deliverer is loud when they’re locked in a tiny room with an enemy.

A dead enemy, now.

But the gunfire doesn’t stop, and Deacon thinks for a moment he’s missed something, another wave of Gen-1’s or (dear God, he prays not) a Courser appearing from somewhere. But no, there’s not. Nothing even close to living but them now.

But it doesn’t stop. The Professor is standing on top of Kellogg’s body, firing down into him, point blank, and she doesn’t stop. Blood covers her shoes and ankles, spatters of it go up her legs and there’s a decent coating on her arms and hands, too, and as Deacon stands up from cover, he sees more spray up and flick across her torso and neck. 

“Hey. Hey! Professor, it’s over!”

The gunfire stops, and he breathes a sigh of relief—too soon, when he hears the clicking. She pulls the trigger a few more time in vain, before an almost bestial snarl leaves her mouth and she throws her gun to the side in a movement that jerks and snaps unnaturally.

“Give me your gun.”

Her voice is vicious, peeled from inside her throat, eyes not leaving the body that is on the ground. If you can still call it a body, when it’s more meat and lead than a person. Her hand jerks out towards him violently, fingers curled like claws.

“Uh… no. Boss, don’t know if you’ve noticed but ammo’s not cheap, and I tend to not want to waste it on the dead. Okay?”

“Give me. Your gun.” She hasn’t moved, hand extended, fingers tense and locked.

_Uh-oh._

Deacon steps in the puddles of blood to break her line of sight on the body, and her eyes flick up to him for an instant, but don’t hold him there. Oh Jesus, he’s seen those eyes before, in the mirror, a long time ago—eyes full of rage and mania and vengeance, and yet holding back a panic and pain that couldn’t be spoken.

“Professor, he got what he deserved, okay? Now it’s over, he’s dead. We gotta get back to Valentine, and to Dez, and we’ll figure out—”

“No.”

“Sorry?”

“No,” her voice is loud, growing louder by the second, “You’re wrong.”

“I’m not a doctor, but I don’t think we need a second opinion here. He’s _very_ dead.”

She ignores him, eyes still on what’s left of Kellogg, “He deserves worse.”

Her hand is shaking, fingers flexing and grasping for something, and it’s like second nature, he reaches out and takes it, feels the blood coating her, but gives her something to hold onto, and finally, _finally,_ she raises her eyes to his face as he speaks.

“You’re right. You are. But this won’t help us find Shaun. And it won’t bring back your husband. Trust me, Professor. _Please_ , trust me.”

His voice cracks slightly in desperation, and for a few terrifying moments, he thinks his words are falling on deaf ears, that she’s about to grab a blunt instrument and go back to work, but instead, her shoulders slump, her head drops, her face goes blank.

Deacon takes a breath. _Not a great improvement,_ he thinks as he leads her to a chair on the other side of the control room, and uses the edge of his shirt to clean the smears of blood off her glasses, praying to whatever might give enough of a shit that she’ll come back from this. He’s seen plenty of people who don’t. He doesn’t want to see her like that.

It isn’t safe to stay here, not by a long shot, but he’s not confident that the Professor is currently able to do anything other than sit and stare, so he makes do. Collects the pistols and fuse cells from the Gen-1’s with a silent apology to Glory, as though she’ll know if he doesn’t, retrieves the empty Deliverer and wipes the blood off of it’s suppressor before setting it down on the desk near her. Grabs the .44 from the deadman’s grip of Kellogg, tucking it into his own holster when he realizes it still has 4 shots in it. Strips the jacket off Kellogg’s torso while trying not to gag, searches the pockets, finds a passcode printed on paper that’s too clean to be from the wasteland, even if it is damp and red in places now. He almost makes a joke in relief, because that too-white terminal in the middle of the room is definitely beyond his very mediocre hacking ability and the Professor is still staring at her blood-soaked shoes.

Deacon nudges around her form to type it into the terminal, and sighs in annoyance at the distinct lack of entries. There’s really only one—a report, marking that Kellogg was making his base of operations here, for some reason. Really, was it too much to hope that Kellogg would keep a diary or something?

_Of course he wouldn’t. That’s why he was dangerous. Because he wasn’t a jumped up raider, he was smart._

But not smart enough to survive a fight with the Professor. He had taunted her over the speakers throughout the facility, and then acted like he respected her. Made no sense to Deacon—some fucked up sense of honor, maybe, offered to the woman who had hunted him like he had so many others.

Deacon looked over at the Professor again. She was still, eyes empty and staring. No tears, even now. He sighed, pulling a stimpack from his pack and depressing it into her arm. He knew she had taken some hits, but couldn’t tell what was her blood and what wasn’t as of now. At this point, he wasn’t sure she could’ve told him, either.

“What do I do now?”

Her voice was so small, so quiet he almost missed it.

Deacon squatted down in front of her, trying to make her meet his eyes as much as he could, “That’s up to you, Professor. My vote would be head back to Diamond City and meet up with Valentine. He’s got a file on this jackass, right? He might know something else, or point us in the right direction.”

Her eyes were still unfocused, but she spoke again, after a long bout of silence.

“He’s older now?” it’s a question, but not because she thinks he has an answer—because she doesn’t know what else to ask.

“Sounds like it. But Professor, listen to me,” he waits, waits until she raises her eyes, and looks at him. “ _He’s alive_. Shaun is alive. These assholes need him for something—I don’t know what, and there’s nothing that can be gained by going down that rabbit hole right now. But whatever they needed him for, they still do. That will protect him, at least for a while.”

Her eyes focus on him as he talks, and he hopes his bullshit logic gives her enough to cling to, even if it is an improbably optimistic take on this.

She stares through him for a moment that feels like a lifetime, and then she nods, just a little, and Deacon lets out a breath he’d been holding, standing again.

“You ready to move, then?”

She pushes her braid back over her shoulder and stands, and her head cocks to one side, eyes landing on the mess on the floor.

“What’s that?” she mutters, and pushes past him.

“Professor, don’t— that’s so gross—”

She kneels down next to what Deacon thinks was Kellogg’s head, pulls something out, a mass of wires and circuits that pulls out like wet string, connected to a few points on the torso and back. And despite his stomach turning over, Deacon leans in closer.

“Looks like Institute tech, alright,” he says, “but Kellogg’s not a synth. No idea what it is.”

The Professor yanks, pulling the clump of wires free, “Maybe Nick will be able to figure something out with this.”

Deacon shrugs, “I mean… maybe. Tinker might as well, if that doesn’t pan out.”

She nods, puts the nasty, bloody clump into an empty ammo box and tucks it into her pack, then pauses.

“I’m… sorry,” she says, face still barely expressive, eyes still hollow and too dark, “I don’t—I don’t know.”

“It’s okay,” Deacon says, grabbing his rifle, and words slip out, and when she looks at him, he sees that she knows he’s not lying, not right now. “I’ve been there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so glad this fic has some traction with people, and I hope you guys enjoyed this section/chapter/installment! I'm not totally thrilled with it, but I also couldn't figure out what else to do with it... so up it goes!  
> I'm going to set myself the goal to get all eleven chapters up by the end of March 2021. Let's see how that goes for me, huh?


End file.
